May 1, 2012

Online Social Security Statements

Social Security has sent out a press release announcing that it is now possible to obtain an online Social Security statement. I forget how long ago it was but I am pretty sure that Social Security made these statements available online briefly in the past until privacy concerns forced them to cancel the service. My recollection is that the service was cancelled even though there were no reports that anyone had improperly obtained private information; there was just speculation that it might happen.

9 comments:

Anonymous
said...

The Social Security Administration (SSA) tested an online response to the Personal Earnings and Benefit Estimate Statement (formerly known as PEBES) in March 1997. Although most people felt that the authentication and security measures that SSA employed were adequate, concerns were expressed in early April 1997 by some members of the public, Congress, and the news media about the impact of the online service on the privacy of Social Security records.

The primary fault found with the online Social Security Statement application was that one person could access another individual's personal record if the first individual knew the second person's personal authenticating information. Further, it was held that the information needed to answer these questions was relatively easy to obtain from sources other than SSA.

Because of the concerns, the Commissioner of Social Security announced on April 9, 1997, that he would suspend the interactive Social Security Statement, which had then been available for approximately one month.

I, too, am an ALJ and did get in. Strange thing, they asked some very unusual information about banking and mortages. Our mortgage was bought out a few years back and they were aware of that. Very, very strange the things they knew and asked. Once in the program seems very good and straight forward as far as benefits and earnings. Hummmm?

I couldn't log in to my own record either. I was unable to guess successfully how SSA had my name in their records. I had to call them to find out.

In another incident, some years ago, I had to bring documentation to the local FO because SSA had changed my date of birth when updating my record after I got married and changed my name. The scary part about this is how they insisted that I must have provided them with the wrong date of birth in my application.

Now that I'm representing claimants before SSA for a living, all of this has begun to make sense.